The present invention relates generally to safety systems for vehicles, such as, for example, trucks or tractor-trailer combinations.
Vehicle safety systems and components serve the salutary purpose of protecting vehicle occupants. Examples of conventional vehicle safety components include “passive” restraints such as, for example, seat belts and airbags. Vehicle stability-regulating systems, which actively influence the control of the vehicle and, thus, the vehicle dynamics, represent more technically sophisticated “active” safety solutions. Such stability-regulating systems include electronic stability control (“ESC”) systems. ESC systems are typically equipped with various sensors in order to detect the status of the vehicle, for example by detecting the longitudinal acceleration and the lateral acceleration of the vehicle. ESC systems analyze these data and decide if and how the vehicle dynamics will be influenced, for example automatically braking the inner rear wheel to counter understeer.